There Are No New Ideas

"There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt."
-Audre Lorde
As much as we would all love to believe that we, as creative professionals are continually coming up with completely original ideas and work, the truth is that creativity in communications is often the result of applying new insights to familiar ideas. We work with a finate number of basic media typesâ€”it's similar to the idea that all literature derives from only seven basic plotsâ€”but from this somewhat limited pool, the possibilities for new stories are endless.
I recently came across an exercise from a class I took as an undergrad, Creative Processes in Advertising. For the assignment, we had to draw two random items out of a hat and find a way to weave the attributes of both items together into an ad (I drew violin and Mini Cooper). As it turns out, this same type of thinking can be applied to the work I do today. Although I'm not creating ads, I'm often working on new ways to approach communications situationsâ€”playing with new combinations of media and messages.
In order to keep innovating, it's important that we keep up on current events, rising trends, new forms of media and media outlets. The more you know, the greater the opportunity you have to find the perfect creative fit for the problem that you're trying to solve.

3 Comments

Ah, the inevitable moment when you feel so grand about your new fancy idea and then when you tell someone about it, they’re reaction is something like “oh yeah, like that other thing that already exists?”
deflation.